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Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York
From the longer Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_of_Shrewsbury,_1st_Duke_of_York This article is about the son of King Edward IV who was imprisoned in the Tower of London. For the article about his grandfather, the father of King Edward IV and King Richard III, see Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York. Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, 1st Duke of Norfolk, 1st Earl of Norfolk, Earl Marshal (17 August 1473 – ?1483) was the sixth child and second son of King Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville, born in Shrewsbury. Prince Richard was created Duke of York in May 1474 and made a Knight of the Garter the following year. From this time on, it became a tradition for the second son of the English sovereign to be Duke of York. On 15 January 1478, in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, when he was about 4 years old, he married the 5-year-old Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, who had inherited the vast Mowbray estates in 1476. Because York's father-in-law's dukedom had become extinct when Anne could not inherit it, he was created Duke of Norfolk and Earl Warennne on 7 February 1477. He was created Earl of Nottingham on 12 June 1476. When Anne de Mowbray died in November 1481 her estates should have passed to William, Viscount Berkeley and to John, Lord Howard. ]]. In January 1483 Parliament passed an act that gave the Mowbray estates to Richard, Duke of York and Norfolk, for his lifetime, and at his death to his heirs, if he had any. The rights of the two co-heirs at law were extinguished; Viscount Berkeley had financial difficulties and King Edward IV paid off those debts. Berkeley then renounced his claims to the Mowbray estate before parliament in 1483. Nothing was done for Lord Howard. Some have asserted that this step provided Howard with the motive to kill the Princes in the Tower. His father died on 9 April 1483. Thus his brother Edward, Prince of Wales, became King of England and was acclaimed as such, and Richard his Heir Presumptive. This was not to last. Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, testified that Edward IV had agreed to marry Lady Eleanor Talbot in 1461. Lady Eleanor was still alive when Edward married Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. The Regency council under the late King's brother Richard Duke of Gloucester, concluded that this was a case of bigamy, invalidating the second marriage and the legitimacy of all children of Edward IV by this marriage. Under Gloucester's influence, both Edward and Richard were declared illegitimate and removed from the line of succession on 25 June 1483. The Duke of Gloucester, as the only surviving brother of Edward IV, became King Richard III. The Duke of York was sent to the Tower of London, then a royal residence, by King Richard III in mid-1483. What happened to him and his brother — the Princes in the Tower— after that has been the subject of much speculation and debate. Due to Tudor propaganda efforts, it was long believed that they were both murdered not long afterward on Richard III's orders; however, the lack of any conclusive proof of their fate has led to alternative scenarios being proposed, for instance that both boys were murdered on the orders of one of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby , Duke of Buckingham, John Morton or Henry VII, or that Richard survived. In the 1490s, Perkin Warbeck, a Pretender for the English crown, claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, but he is generally considered to have been an impostor, and was labeled thus by the Tudor regime. There have been some, a minority, in every generation since then who have believed that Warbeck was Richard, Duke of York, while others have alleged that he was an illegitimate son of either Edward IV or Richard III. The skeletons of two children discovered in a chest in the Tower in 1674 were presumed to be the princes, but the evidence is not conclusive because the bones could not be dated and neither could their sex be established. These remains were subsequently interred in Westminster Abbey; however, in 1789, when restoration work was being carried out at the tomb of Edward IV in Windsor Castle, the coffins of two mysterious, unidentified children were found in what appeared to be a secret vault adjoining the main vault of the king and queen. But these were never examined. Category:Biographies Category:Royalty Category:England